BOUQUET TO STERLING FOR NOT SEEKING
RE-ELECTION

A bouquet — the Sterling Decision award — to Kathleen Sterling for listening to her better (or at least rational) angels and declining to run for re-election to the Tri-City Medical Center board.

On a purely political level, Sterling makes Todd Akin, the embattled Missouri Senate candidate, look like a GOP golden boy.

For years, Sterling has been a roaring bear in an Elizabethan carnival, the subject of what she would call baiting and what most of her fellow trustees would call the reasonable result of her outrageously intemperate behavior.

“I’ve been badgered, threatened, harassed, intimidated and insulted,” she said in an open letter, assuming no responsibility for a tsunamic tenure marked by armed guards, banishment from meetings and orders not to enter the hospital she helped govern.

No one should doubt Sterling’s intelligence, but it’s been clear for years that, if she wants to influence Tri-City’s future, she should operate from the sidelines, not the boardroom.

However, a brick — the Don’t Know When to Fold ‘Em award — to three incumbent board members — RoseMarie Reno, George Coulter and Charlene Anderson — for running for re-election despite a record as spotty as the chickenpox.

Along with Sterling, this trio formed a slate in the 2008 election that came in and fired the hospital’s leadership, spawning nearly four years of damaging antics.

What Tri-City needs is a major mulligan and, fortunately, three solid candidates with city council experience — Carlsbad’s Julie Nygaard and Ramona Finnila and Vista’s Steve Gronke — are running to bring some semblance of sanity to a board that has staggered along under the direction of Tri-City CEO Larry Anderson, a strong administrator who needs a much stronger board to inspire full confidence.

To get its swagger back, Tri-City needs a capable, unified board that balances the obligation to protect the public trust while promoting the hospital as a beacon that’s second to none, and certainly not second to Palomar.

To get there, Tri-City needs an infusion of fresh, but experienced, blood. The choice should be simple.

A brick — the Sadistic Space Cadet award — to the neo-Katzenjammer Kid(s) who thought it would be amusing to send a reptile into the stratosphere.

“Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post,” author Alex Haley observed, “you know he had some help.”

Anytime you see a 1-pound turtle duct-taped to a bunch of balloons, snagged in an Oceanside tree, it ain’t rocket science to figure out this little creature was the subject of a homemade experiment by giggly children (or idiots with the mental capacity of kids).

Granted, there is some historical precedent for waving bye-bye to animals and watching them soar into the blue yonder.

In 1783, the Montgolfier brothers, French hot-air balloon pioneers, sent a sheep, a duck and a rooster aloft to study the effects of flight on the human anatomy. No one charged them with cruelty to animals.

In the name of science, many creatures — from fruit flies to monkeys and dogs and even people — sacrificed their lives as space guinea pigs (as did the odd guinea pig, I imagine).

Though it will never happen — we are, after all, a nation of laws — how fitting would it be if the turtle torturers were found and sentenced to a punishment that truly fit the crime.

In a reprise of the unforgettable 1982 flight of Lawrence “Lawnchair Larry” Walters, the miscreants would be duct-taped into an aluminum patio chair attached to helium-filled weather balloons.

As the torturers shoot up in the sky, PETA marksmen could shoot the balloons with pellet guns, bringing the chair slowly (or not so slowly) back to earth, preferably in the branches of a towering eucalyptus tree.

Well, that object lesson in empathy would be the legal system sticking out its neck, but as turtles well know, that’s the only way you get anywhere.

A bouquet — the Charity to the Fore! award — to Temple Adat Shalom’s Men’s Club for hosting a novel all-day Sept. 2 fundraiser that turns sponsors into miniature hole architects — and golfers of all ages and religious persuasions into Putt-Putting angels for the needy.

“This is going to be the wildest and wackiest mini golf course to ever hit San Diego County,” promises indefatigable organizer Rob Weinberg. “We’ve got sponsors of every stripe imaginable who are building holes to suit their personality. Plumber has you hitting into a toilet bowl, magician has you chip into a top hat, painter has you hitting around cans of paint.”

As a rule, I leave event promotion to others. But this zany golf tournament on a Jewish campus, benefiting 30-year-old Interfaith Community Services and other charities, hits me the right way.